This is a scummy move. In the industry I work in, we call this front-running and it’s a criminal act. If the same laws applied here godaddy would be looking at a nine digit fine and jail time for whoever thought this is a good idea.
Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
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Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#32Is there a safe method to search for domains?
If you can understand enough Danish to use it I can recommend https://gratisdns.dk
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#33I had this happen as well in the past when researching domain names for a new product.
Pro Tip: Stay the hell away from GoDaddy for everything. I've had the unfortunate task of managing a server hosted with them and it's been consistently awful (ex. I literally cannot upgrade PHP because the VPS doesn't support it and there is no upgrade path without spinning up an entirely new VPS on a different, and of course more expensive, plan). The constant upsells on garbage are basically predatory at this point, too.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#34godaddy is ran by crooks...
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#35They also say "domain unavailable" if you include "godaddy" in the domain name. Any other site will let you register profane domains with "godaddy" in them.
I wonder if they'd allow you to transfer such a domain to them.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#36Or perhaps someone else had the same idea. Domains get registered all the time. For someone else to want the same domain you want on the same day may seem like a low probability event but when multiplied by the number of people and domains purchased through godaddy every day the rate of low probability events happening is quite high. Experiences like yours probably happen to multiple people every day through no malicious activity on the part of godaddy.
tl;dr never attribute to malice that which is bound to happen because statistics
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#37Not really familiar with submission rules and customs here, but shouldn't that headline be prefixed by "Tell HN:"?
I agree, I was confused as there was no url following the title.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#38GoDaddy has been doing this since they have existed, I assume. I first used them after the superbowl ad to search for a domain name and they registered it. Never again.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#39This sucks and I feel for you. But the sad fact is that domain registrars have been doing this ever since domain names became big business in the 90s. As a PSA to everyone, you should only ever use whois in a terminal window to see if a domain is available. It's included with macOS, Windows (?), Linux or any other OS anyone's likely to use. [Edit: a reply says it's not included in Windows. It seems you can download i…
Yes, namecheap is also sketchy had some trouble when I tried to renew a domain I bought with them then I tried to transfer it to Google domains to only have it blocked
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#40Called domain front running https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running
I was always expecting something like this to be going on, so I'd never use any Web-based availability-checking tools but then I also tend to be a bit paranoid at times.
Yet now it turns out not only is this established practice, there is even a Wikipedia entry on it.
"It's only paranoia if they're not really after you!"